July 30 2025, 20:08

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Director: Peter Weir

Release year: 1975

On an outing from their boarding school in the Australian outback, four girls wander around the base of Hanging Rock and are tempted to climb higher. The rocks seem to have ghostly powers and the girls fall asleep in a stone circle near the top. Three of them walk through a gap and disappear. A teacher from the group is also seen walking up to Hanging Rock and also goes missing. The mystery engulfs the school and the local community.

It’s clearly an excellent film. The schoolgirls all give strong performances, the audio is cleverly used to make the viewer feel unsettled watching the corseted, gloved girls in an ancient wilderness teeming with insects and birds, but... I couldn’t get into it. Because I only read the book last week, the faithfulness of the adaptation makes the film seem uninspired. Chunks of dialogue are taken straight from the novel. I can’t seem to see the film on its own merits.

This hasn’t happened to me before. I wrote notes on the book at the weekend on Patreon, and there’s no point in repeating myself. I don’t think the film brings enough new to the story. There’s a stronger focus on the potential lesbian relationships in such a female-centric community, and the friendship between Michael and Albert has gay undertones that I didn’t pick up in the book, but it isn’t enough of a differentiation. A disappointing experience.

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